


All We Are Is All We Are

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Brief, Brilliant Miracles [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Awkward Conversations, F/M, Moral Ambiguity, Rescue Missions, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3728407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'All we are is all we are.' The good and bad, honorable and evil. You are Thom Rainier, but you are also Blackwall. You are a vicious murderer, but also my friend. I told you that Antivans are a complex people."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Frostback Mountains, 942 Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Dragon Age, but these characters are pure pleasure to play with. This is a part of a series with my previous stories, "Antivan Peaches Do Not Bruise" and "Stories Written On Our Skin." They're great tastes that taste great together!

Josephine Montilyet shivered under the thin, linen blanket. It was one of the few things she had managed to grab before fleeing up the secret pass. She liked to believe, as a scion of Antiva City's premier trading house, a daughter many times descended from the ferocious Queen Asha, that the damp and chill wind was the only reason she could not still herself.

It was, as Josephine was coming to believe so many things were, an absolute lie. The rushing thunder of enormous, black wings filled her ears, the prickling needles of small burns danced along her cheeks and hands. Her nostrils had revolted long ago, in concert with her stomach, at the stench of charred flesh, human and equine, layered over an eldrtich stench from the depths of human nightmare. 

She clutched at the front of her silken blouse, once the gold and purple livery of her house, now a red and black ruin. The apprentice. Yes, it had to have been him. That's when events passed from the realm of terrible but understandable and developed the topsy-turvy quality that she associated with fevered, nighttime visits to the Fade during sweaty bouts of Tellari Cough, during the sweltering Antivan summers of her girlhood. 

She did not even know the man--boy, more accurately. How could anyone keep up with anything, since Trevelyan had more than trebled their strength with the addition of Fiona's rebel mages? She never would now, even if it had been her heart's fondest desire, nor could she drive him from her mind. He'd stumbled from the tavern while she ran from Adan's shop, towards the Chantry. She had been buying a tincture of deathroot for Minaeve, the shy little elf that shared her office. It seemed a ridiculous detail to remember, but one thing she did believe was that no detail of this night would ever escape her.

He seized her dress, robes ablaze, tried to speak with a tongue blistered beyond recognition, to gaze pleadingly up at her with eyes that had melted and run in rivulets down his cheeks. The charred, crumbling wreckage on her clothing were gobbets of his flesh. They'd pulled away from him when one of the Inquisition soldiers battened the lad away, with his shield, allowing Josie to take to her heels.

She did not know if the woman had survived the night's myriad terrors, nor even knew the new recruit well enough to put a name to her, either--just that she was Fereldan and had come along with the mages from Redcliffe--but would have been willing at that moment to offer her a bann's seat and half of House Montilyet's fortune. 

It was all so very absurd. The night simply did not shatter into shards around strands of diversely hued fire. It could not be snowing, either, because in spite of how she shivered, the flakes lighting on her dark curls and long, sooty eyelashes, Josie felt nothing but the warmth of a twilit Antivan summer evening lull her to sleep. Frogs called to each other, in a far off marsh, and birds answered over the reeds--predator calling out to prey, or vice versa, beseeching impossible mercy from the Maker's ordained path for nature. She settled deeper into the blankets. Why had she thought it was winter? Tomorrow would be a beautiful day; she and Yvette could visit the market, maybe buy a new doll to keep company with her already impressive collection...

"Ambassador!" A gravelly voice broke her reverie. Why was this rough spectre haunting her bedroom? "Josephine... Josie!" He sat beside her, on his haunches, and pressed a flask to her lips. The impertinece! "Drink, Ambassador Montilyet. It's brandy."

"I don't want any, ser. I'm so sleepy."

"Want it or not, you need it." 

"What I need is to just rest my eyes for a few minutes."

"If you go to sleep, Josie, you might not wake up."

"What? That's absurd."

He chuckled in that deep, soul shaking baritone and took her small hands in his big ones, began to rub the warmth back into them. They were so rough but at the same time so, so gentle. "It's just the sort of thing that happens to fine ladies in ruffled silk who fall asleep in snowbanks. Now drink." He released her hands and slipped the flask between her lips, again.

She did take a sip, this time. The burning liquid slid down her throat, tracing tendrils of fire through every drop of blood. With another swallow everything came into focus around her again. Little droplets of ice, driven on by the cruel wind, slashed her face. Her fingers, wrapped tightly in the blanket's green fabric, had stiffened into frozen claws that she could feel only at the furthest ranges of understanding. It seemed like they would remind her what pain could truly feel like as soon as there was the smallest hint of warmth. If there was any of that precious commodity left in all of Thedas. "I think I preferred my sweet summer at the Montilyet estate, outside of Antiva City."

"If it's all the same to you, I'm glad you came back to the Frostbacks. It might have been hard getting you back from Antiva City. It's a long way, after all."

"I can't imagine any place further from home than where we are right now."

"You'd be surprised. I've been a lot of place that I thought couldn't get further away from Markham."

"The Deep Roads?" 

"Er... yes." He sipped the brandy. "The Deep Roads. They're terrible; absolutely full of darkspawn and... things."

She managed to smile around a sigh that hung visibly in the air, showed astounding resilience of spirit in these circumstances. "Those must be hardy things, to share space with the darkspawn."

"Nothing you'd like to be around, m'lady. Deepstalkers, giant spiders, dragons." He shivered, now, and flakes of ice dropped from his beard. "I pray to the Maker that Bull's Chargers and Sister Nightingale's rangers can find a pass for us to go up, soon. I don't know how much longer some of the Haven folks can make it."

"You'd be surprised, Warden." Josie considered what had transpired, the nightmare on wing. "After what they survived earlier I'm almost certain the good people of Haven can take anything."

"They'll face what comes with courage, right enough... but it looks like the only thing coming is snow and more snow. They're going to freeze. We're going to freeze."

"Come under my blanket." She lifted its flaps and inclinded her head towards him. "It's not a great deal of room, but two are usually warmer than one. The heat of our bodies will make up for much... unless we've become so cold that our blood is now ice."

"I..." He stiffened. "I'm not sure it's appropriate."

She rolled her magnificent, dark eyes. "Come along, Warden Blackwall... I'm inviting you to share my blanket so that we might see another sunrise, not into my bedchamber." This provoked a strangled noise that, under other circumstances, might have been a giggle. "Not that it would be anyone's business if I did, for that matter."

"You're the Inquisition's Ambassador and favored daughter of Antiva. I'm just a man who's really good at hitting things." He pondered a moment. "And getting hit by them, I suppose, considering how cracked my shield usually is after a fight."

"You forget, ser... you are a Grey Warden--a hero! Those things that you are good at hitting are the Blighted nightmares of an entire world. The things that hit you are usually the Alpha members of Hurlock bands. It makes things a little bit different, don't you think?" She coughed, a deep racking sound from her slender chest, and he remembered that the one trying to save him, here, was in the direst straits herself.

He joined her under the blanket, before any more warmth could escape the ailing woman, and drew it around them. "I should have known better than trying to argue with a diplomat. You people could talk the clouds down from the heavens."

"It is my job. Do the Grey Wardens employ many diplomats?"

"A few, to negotiate passage through war zones and call for recruits. There's not much need, though. The ancient treaties do their work, and the darkspawn don't seem terribly interested in negotiation."

"I do not think that those Red Templars have much more use for it... or Corypheus... or the Archdemon. I was just a little girl during the Blight, and we were not affected in Antiva as much as the poor people of Fereldan and the Free Marches, but I do not remember it sending any envoys to the rulers of the nations." She sagged against his shoulder, let her eyelids flutter closed. "I'm glad that as many people made it as did... even if Trevelyan--"

He knew what she was about to say, but pressed his finger to her lips before the words could escape. There was no point in dwelling on the demise of the Herald, after all, and it might have been premature in any event. They rested in silence for a long moment and Blackwall considered that, under different circumstances, it might have been a very pleasant situation indeed.

A shout up ahead broke their reverie. It was Krem, Bull's lieutenant. He shouted for Cullen, Blackwall, his commmander, Cassandra, Vivienne, Sister Nightingale... anyone with more authority than him. Skinner and Dalish had found the Herald sticking out of a snowbank, covered in blood, half-frozen and pink with burns inflicted by the Archdemon and the conflagration of Haven's demise. This, being well above his grade of pay and level of comfort, had led him to order Dalish to keep the enchanter warm with her "archery" while he passed the problem off to someone who might be able to handle it adroitly.

Havoc exploded in the make-shift camp. Bull, Cullen and Leliana rushed past their position--the Qunari still didn't have his damned shirt on, for what reason Blackwall could not begin to fathom. Cassandra limped behind them, leaning on the defunct staff of a dead mage, hobbled by the wounds to hip, back and legs she had sustained in the fight against Knight-Captain Denam. 

She shouted and waved. "Bring healers! Get Grand-Enchanter Fiona, or the surgeon... someone, damn all your eyes!" She roared her disgust at the limits of human motion, how her own injuries slowed her. It was a raw, ugly noise for the same kind of night. "If the Herald dies then I swear by Andraste's flames that I will set my blade to someone's flesh!" Blackwall wondered if her tortured expression and ragged voice were nothing more than the Seeker's worry for her nascent Inquisition and its chances if Trevelyan should not survice. Bah... he was a romantic fool. Too much time spent among chevaliers in his wasted youth, perhaps. 

Josephine sighed. "I suppose that I should join them; the work of an Ambassador is never done. And just as I was getting warmed up."

"What, you're going to talk to the Herald until he thaws out? There's nothing you can do right now, Josie, nothing to gain and much to lose if you don't take care of yourself." He smiled. "If you can't fulfill your obligations then we're going to have to make Sera our liason to the great kingdoms of Thedas."

She shuddered, lapsed into shivering, and then brought herself under control. "Perish the thought. We want the world at war with Corypheus and his minions, not the Inquisition."

"I don't know. Some folks might find her... refreshing."

"You must be confused. Or maybe I am. Aren't 'refreshing' and 'terrifying' different words?"

He chuckled, deep in this throat. "We'll discuss it at whatever length you want. Just sit here with me until they dig Trevelyan out. Then it's back to work." He sighed. "Back to work."

"It never ends, does it?"

"Not that I've noticed."


	2. A cell in Val Royeaux, 943 Dragon

"Oy! You! Wake up, you!" Thom Rainier curled tighter into the thin blanket he'd been provided, on a cot that was probably more comfortable than he deserved. The wraith at his bars grumbled and scraped her dagger across them. "Broodybeard, ahoy! Drag your arse out of bed and make with the escaping."

"Haven't you forgotten that an escape usually implies an open door?"

Tumblers turned and clanked. Sera chortled. "I've got deft hands and fine tools, I have. Now. The door is open. Or unlocked. Or the lock is utterly ruined at least. Now up and at em, Blackiebutt. We've got places to be."

"How did you even get in? There are guards all over the place."

"Dorian put em to sleep, or sent em to the Fade or somewhat. Said he was gonna give them the sweetest dream they ever had, getting weird with 'the handsomest altus in all of Tevinter.'" She stuck her tongue out. "Don't have any problems with his confidence, do he?"

"He oozes the stuff like a gurgut drools."  
"Eyyyuuuuh, yuck." She cackled, assured as to the potency of Dorian Pavus' spell even if she enjoyed picking on the man. "Remember how that one did in the Black Fens, yeah? I didn't think that my--well, my little booties were already ruined by the leeches and water-ness, so were everyone's (so were little Sister Birdybrain's when she came to take a look-see and didn't she get pissed right off)--but, yeah... poor Inky-doo. His whole..." She sighed. "The best part was that the gurgut spit was totally... and it made the dye in his... it looked like a rainbow! A soggy, sad little rainbow like the kind Solas lives under." 

"I know what they're doing." Rainier pressed his forearm to his eyes. "They've sent you to torture me. The headsman or the gallows... that's too quick. I've got to suffer, before I die. I could see it. Nightingale had that evil, flinty look in her eyes."

"Lady Featherbottom's eyes are creepy, and stupid, and do not belong in a face as pretty as hers." Sera pondered half a moment--the only length her leaping imagination could handle, probably. "I'd say she should cut out someone else's and give them a try, to match her pretty face, but that evil bitch might just do it. Yuck!" She spat. "I don't want no-one's eyes on my conscience, not even for a good cause." She leaned against the bars. "Now are you coming or what?"

"Or what. I've done terrible things, Sera. I deserve whatever they're going to do to me."

"Oh, terrible things." She stuck her tongue out. "You killed some stupid noble and his stupid noble brats that would have grown up to be stupid nobles. They never did me no favors and wouldn't piss on me if a dragon flew over. On the other hand..." She rubbed her chin. "You did lie. You're not really Blackiebutt, but I didn't know the real one, so..."

She spat on the floor, kicked it with the toe of her shoe, looked like she might string an arrow and put it through his throat on the spot. "I guess you're as close as I'm going to get. I friggin' hate lying liars. But... you kept an ogre from smushing me in Valammar, so you weren't lying about being a darkspawn whacking bad arse, or I guess not wanting me to get pulpitated, but..." She stamped. "Why does it have to be so fuggin' complicated? I like doing things with friends; we steal stuff, smash stuff, have a laugh, have a pint and go home."

"Doing things with friends. It sounds a whole lot like being a soldier."

"Nah, that's where you're wrong." She finally smiled, the radiant grin that made her plain, pug-nosed face into something spectacular. "Friends don't do what people tell them to; soldiers do. That's what got you up-fucked arse, mate."

"And friends don't ever get that way?"

"Oh, Maker no... we're usually there or worse. But friends stand by friends. That's why they're not so many of em."

"Well, you've smashed the lock and you're stealing me... I guess we're going to have a laugh, have a pint and go home?"

"The pint'll have to wait--those guards are going to be right well pissed off when they wake up and find out that they haven't been doing the sideways twist with Dori-do--and I don't feel a whole hell of a lot like laughing." She drew her dagger. Blackwall tensed before she started cleaning her nails with it. 

"Don't know if you'll feel like it, either, once we get back to Skyhold. Chesty McHair and Our Lady of the Shitshooting Ravens are all about forgiving you--they figure that Hawke and the Warden kicked around with folks just as bad or worse, Lady M for one. Cassandra, though..." Sera shuddered. "Like a storm cloud, that one. She can't decide if she wants your head on a plate or your guts for garters, and you know it's easy for her to bend Inky's ear from the same pillow."

None of that really mattered. Well, it did but didn't seem so important compared to what surged out of his throat and pushed through his lips next. "What about Josephine? What does Lady Montilyet think?"

"Awwww, sweet." Sera, for all she didn't feel like laughing, giggled.

"Tell me, damn you, or I won't move."

"You might if I get Bull in here to whonk you on the head with a frying pan and drag you, yeah."

"He's here, too?"

"Dorian don't go far without him."

Blackwall nodded his approval; they were a good, if odd, pair. "We're getting far afield. Tell me about Josie."

Sera outright cackled, this time. It was the sweetest sound Blackwall had heard in weeks and, at the same time, he was more thankful for the potency of Dorian's magic than he could have ever expressed. Finally, she calmed. "Ah, what does Lady Maria von Prissypants think, what does she think. Who do you think organized this Chasind goat rope, anyhow?"

It was music to Blackwall's ears. He stood. "Let's move fast--we don't want Dorian to get worn out holding a spell for too long, even if he's having a fine old time. I won't be much use until I get a sword but... until then I've got my fists."

"Right on!" Sera winked. "Let's get moving, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing Sera... I really kind of love her.


	3. Josephine Montilyet's office, Skyhold, 943 Dragon

It took them an adventuresome fortnight to lay hands on Josephine's door on a moon-bathed night. Evading chevaliers had taken all of Dorian's Fade-touched illusory skill, Bull's prodigious strength and the bottles of lightning, ice and fire that flowed from Sera's fingertips like crackling songs. Blackwall struggled alongside them but, weakened as he was by weeks of imprisonment, could do little more than protect himself with a Fereldan soldier's simple tower shield, taken off a dead man. These were not proud moments for a lifelong warrior. 

The chevaliers came with less and less regularity as they skirted the Dales and Exalted Plain on their way to Skyhold, eventually drying up to a trickle and disappearing altogether. Blackwall wondered if the Inquisitor, or more likely Sister Leliana, had called in favors with the Orlesian crown--Celene and Briala owed them so, so many. Or, perhaps, Thom Ranier had just scattered to the wind, once again, and his pursuers were willing to wait for his ugly face to resurface so that they could peel it off his head in slices.

Here they were, slinking in like thieves. Oh, Blackwall wished that he was only a thief. Other sins weighed more heavily on the soul. Josephine slumped at her desk, a crumpled pile of silk ribbons and shadows cast by a single, guttering candle. She looked up, when Sera noisily cleared her throat, and the blood immediately began to drain from Blackwall's face.

Josie was still beautiful, there was no way she could be anything else, but the handsome, fine-boned face looked hollow around those absorbing, ink-drop eyes, deeper pools of black in the darkness. Ugly bags stood under them and her hair, usually pulled into a bun with meticulous discipline or allowed to hang in loose, dark curls like Arbor Blessing as it crept over the edge of a wall swirled in a frayed, wiry cloud. She motioned to smooth it, realized the futility, and crossed the room to them with all the trepidation of one whose bones are made of glass. "Warden Blackw--er, Serah Rainier, I suppose. It's good to see you here in one piece." 

"I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you, Lady Montilyet, even if I might deserve being shortened by a head just like the Orlesians were planning."

"Yes. Well, yes." She gestured towards the door. "Sera, could you leave me with him, for a moment?"

"Oh, ho, oh-ho." Sera pursed her lips. "You're going to be all kissy, aren't you? Make sure that you don't get caught in his big, bushy beard."

"Sera, no."

"You're not the constable of me."

"Perhaps not." Josie offered the enigmatic smile reserved most often for situations of grave diplomatic importance. It seemed feral, somehow, plastered across the face of this ghoulish, gaunt woman. "If you do not excuse yourself, however, Madame du Fer will be informed ahead of time the next time you plan to place anything untoward in her undergarments. The results could be... tragic, I imagine."

"Evil little talky bitch!" Sera shook her head. "I can't believe you'd do me like that, a poor little churl from the Denerim alienage." Blackwall did not know what to find more impressive, how Josephine would handle the situation or that Sera had learned the word "churl." It must have come from traveling with Dorian for these last weeks.

"A good diplomat does many terrible things in her career, Sera, and ignores many more for a greater good. Your Jennies would blush truly red if you knew half of them."

She was half out the heavy, oak door, wreathed in shadow. "I'm going, I'm going. Evil, that's what you are! Pure evil... and bloody well friggin' brilliant." She did not know, Blackwall imagined, that they could hear this last utterance.

"So... terrible things in the name of a greater good. What greater good did you serve, Lady Montilyet, by sending our friends to free me?"

"Lady Montilyet... don't call me that. It seems..." She hugged herself. "Cold, I suppose. It could be this mountain air."

He took a step towards her. "Josephine..."

"Don't call me that, either." She shrank to her desk and flopped into the large, well-stuffed chair. He was reminded how small she was, how delicate the bones in her hands and feet, how he'd feared treading on the latter or squeezing the former too vigorously during their dancing lessons.

"What shall I call you, then?" He loomed over the desk, realized how it must look given his status as a convicted bandit and assassin.

"I don't know." A bitter laugh was born deep in her throat. "Isn't that amusing, serah? My career, my life, is built around knowing exactly the right words, the perfect title for any man or situation, and I don't even know what you should call me. Or what I should call you."

"There are a lot of good names for me; none of them are very nice, I'm afraid."

"Most of them would not stir pride in the chest of any man, no. There are others I can think of, however... even the noblest chevalier would be honored to wear."

"I stole the only title I ever had worth a damn. Warden..." He shook his head. "I took it from the finest man I ever knew and the only thing I did in return was tarnish his name after he was dead." 

"You've done a lot more than that, Bl--serah. And there are some names for you that might be acceptable."

"Oh?"

"Champion, for example. You are Lord Trevelyan's Champion, Shield of the Inquisition."

"No, I'm not. Blackwall was those things."

"Then, perhaps, you really are Blackwall?" Josie scrubbed her eyes with small, tightly balled fists. "I'm exhausted, or going insane. But still... you were the one who leapt in front of the corrupted high dragon's gout of flame and took it on your shield, not the ghost of a dead Warden. You were the one who hamstrung Knight-Captain Denam, after he half cut Cassandra in half, so that the Inquisitor and Solas could work their spells on him. An evil man, like so many whisper about Thom Rainier being, would not have put himself at such risk to save others."

"So you believe that there is good in me, in spite of my evil actions. Is that why you arranged for Sera and the others to pluck me from the jaws of Orlesian justice?"

"Well, yes and no..."

"Can you explain?"

"Ah, perhaps you do not remember. I will never forget. In the Frostback Mountains, after the fall of Haven... I shivered under a blanket, tempted so sorely by the sheer hell of the night to slip into a comfortable sleep, like the one so many of our fellows did not awaken from. You offered me brandy and shared your warmth with me, stayed by my side even when Krem and the Chargers found Enchanter Trevelyan and everyone else ran to him."

He laid his huge, rough hand over her small, smooth one, instead. She did not pull away, so he curled his fingers around hers, brown and delicate. "You subverted the deliverance of a just sentence, then, and thumbed your adorable little nose at the Empire for the sake of a thicker blanket and a few sips of brandy?" He laughed. The absurdity of the situation seemed perfect. "I didn't know you noble girls were so easy."

"Maker's breath, you clod." Her voice was thick, eyes shining. "You know that's not the truth. It's not a trade, not a favor rendered for a favor--I'm Antivan, yes, but we're not quite that indelicate about our do ut des."

"Well, then?"

"I care about you--even if I struggle with being disgusted with that you have been, have done." She sighed and laid her head against his hard, hairy hand for a moment to compose herself. "It's a proverb in Antiva--a land where moral complexities tend to be, er, particularly complex. It can be a little hard to translate into trade tongue but..." She cleared her throat. "'All we are is all we are.' The good and bad, honorable and evil. You are Thom Rainier, but you are also Blackwall. You are a vicious murderer, but also my friend." Her smile was wan but sincere. "I told you that we are a complex people."

"So what does it mean...?" He wavered between calling her Josie or Ambassador, decided on neither. "How will you figure out your relationship to the two men that are one?"

"I don't know, serah... but I was more willing to find out than leave you to the mercy of a headsman or noose." She squeezed his fingers before withdrawing hers. "Tomorrow is a new day. Let us be glad that we can face it together."


End file.
